Arnaeus, the Dreamer
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Arnaeus wants nothing more than freedom to leave the chapel for one day and fly like the birds he sees outside. But, as a vampire, he will never be able to step foot out into the sun.


_1788. Somewhere._

He had never before considered the crispness of a new morning, of a day just beginning and a night quickly falling to sleep. If it weren't for the painful burning of light in his eyes, Arnaeus might have almost fallen in love with this idea of morning.

Arnaeus stuck his head out of the window for one last second, sighing, as he wondered how long it would take for the ministers to notice he was out of his cell. They would be ever so mad, of course, but Arnaeus rarely minded.

The vampire had spent much of his newest life disobeying orders, refusing to follow directions, and all in all, being an annoyance to those around him, until even most of the young and freshly turned vampires wanted nothing to do with troublesome Arnaeus.

But what actions could be taken to control the boy? He was wild and reckless, yes, but much too fast to catch and far too big a trouble to bother trying to explain that _this is just how things work, Arnaeus. This is just how life is for you._

It wasn't so much that Arnaeus was a _bad _kid, but rather that he had been a not-very well behaved child for a _very, very _long time. After all, one could appear to be a mere eight years of age for only so long before deciding that the only thing left was to act out.

Arnaeus sighed once more, popping back inside of the tower, wondering what it would be like to be a bird; he wanted to go soaring through the city and not burn, and the wanted to sleep in trees and chase off squirrels from food, and he just wanted to go _outside_.

The ministers would not let him go, though. In fact, they would not let hardly anyone go outside, claiming that it was too dangerous, and that they might get caught. And what would happen if the Muggles were to find a nest of vampires living in the church towers?

"Arnaeus, whatever do you think you are doing? What if someone had seen you?" demanded the crystalline voice of Medrana, his best mate in the whole coven. She was standing on the level below him, looking up with a crooked grin.

"No one can see me from here, Meddy, I am perfectly safe up here at the top of tower. Besides that, if the Muggles _had _seen me, it would not take too much effort to convince them that they have merely seen a figment of their imagination," Arnaeus replied, jumping down from his platform.

He gave Medrana the childish smile that usually won over any and every person he ever came across, but Medrana only rolled her eyes and tugged at his robes, pulling him down the long staircases with her, moving so fast from level to the next that Arnaeus' head spin.

"It is not the Muggles that I am worried about seeing you, Arnaeus. You _know _that the ministers are already mad enough at you for trying to pull that miserable mirror trick on Wallace, which, you know, really was_ not_ that funny," Medrana said curtly as she opened a wooden door that led to even more staircases looping ever farther down.

"Who, me? I never did any such thing to Wallace, and even if I had, the fat little pig had it coming. He never stops talking about how dreadfully dull it must be to be the minister's pet, and he even has been pulling Nell's hair during the morning prayers," Arnaeus mumbled.

This remark got a sharp jab of the elbow from Medrana, who shook her head to mean _do not talk about that_. Little Nell, who looked and acted six years old, but was probably closer to four hundred and fifteen, had not taken a liking to Fat Wallace, one of the young, new vampires.

Medrana herself appeared to be not more than thirteen, though she _claimed _to have been nearly seventeen when she was fished from the icy ponds of northern Germany and transformed into a creature of the night, just like the rest of them, almost two hundred and ninety-seven years ago, making her practically a young vampire.

Arnaeus himself, though only appearing to be merely eight years old-with all the energy and childish pranks that came with such an age-was nearing his six hundred and twenty-ninth birthday in the upcoming spring, a fact which he was looking forward to with hesitation.

The ministers had been speaking recently of how it was coming time for Arnaeus to take up a much larger role in the church, something which only discouraged Arnaeus and made him turn that much more eagerly to his daydreams of flight.

He did not want to act mature or practise as a minister, or anything else that the eldest vampires might have in store for him. He was much too content to continue dropping ink pellets on Fat Wallace's head and tying Old Maid Märta's dress to the fireplace when she tried to chastise him.

Unlike Fat Wallace, Arnaeus did not consider himself to a bully so much as he was a prankster, the sort who found a special sort of beauty in the art of pulling off a particularly grand joke. But training under the ministers would mean the end to all the fun.

They would expect him to be stiff and formal, leading the other vampires through long discussions and sitting through boring meetings about how to handle the uneasy situation concerning the Muggles in the city. The ministers would ruin everything by making him one of them.

But this was not the sort of thing he could tell Medrana, who thought that being accepted by the ministers was a blessing that she would gladly accept but for the curse of her feeble female body. Medrana simply did not understand why Arnaeus was so reluctant.

The boy continued to follow his mate down the winding staircase, head still full of his morning spent with the sunrise, and his dream of taking flight far, far away from this cursed chapel, where his every moment was controlled by the ministers.

Hopefully, today would not be the day that his life changed for the worse, nor would it be the day that they decided to take away what little fun and freedom he was currently allowed to have. If he was forced to finally take on the robes of a minister, then Arnaeus would _never _have the chance to go out and explore the world like he so dearly dreamt of doing.

Hopefully, today would be just another long, boring, ordinary day full of prayer sessions and classes taught in Latin. Hopefully, it would only just be another scratch in the wall of Arnaeus' cell as he counted down to the day that he would finally be free to _do something more _with his life than listen to the dull tones of his teachers.

Arnaeus sent up a silent prayer for one more ordinary day free from surprises as he allowed Medrana to pull him to the main chapel, the older, yet younger at the same time, female chatting quickly about how much fun it would be to train as a minister, the one thing that Arnaeus would rather die once more than ever be.


End file.
